The weekend of May 2nd is going to be a big one for me. I’ll be attending my first in person virtual assistance event - The Forum on Virtual Assistance. I will be co-facilitating a session with Elayne Whitfield, on ‘Nailing the Sale’. Elayne will be telling participants how to properly respond to ‘RFPs’ and I will be talking about the best ways to follow up with prospects, leading to more signed clients.

I am so excited about FoVA. Not only will I actually be able to spend time with some peers, but I’ll get to meet a couple of my team members. It’s going to be great!

Today, in honor of St. Patrick’s Day, registrants will receive $75 off the price of the conference.

If you are on the fence, or concerned about the cost, you really should do all you can to attend. A networking event like this will be priceless. It’s an investment every professional should make in their business. Heck, I have two babies I’ll be leaving PEI to fly to Toronto. That won’t be easy, but I’m going to do it.

Can’t wait to see you there!

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This month, I’ve decided to feature one of my local and most active clients - Maureen Kerr of Kerr Consulting “Your Marketing Mavens”.

Your Marketing Mavens helps its clients to spread their remarkable business ideas effectively and inexpensively. Maureen’s ideal clients have a remarkable idea or business and just need a bit of help spreading their message. Many of these people are either intimidated by technology or simply unaware of the different ways Internet marketing can really improve their marketing efforts.

Kerr Consulting offers a ton of services, including: SWOT analysis, business plan assistance, writing marketing plans, creating newsletters and presentations, copywriting, website creation, and so on and so forth.

It’s really a joy working with ‘Moe’, she is definitely an ideal client for me. She has a great business and she’s a wonderful, ethical person to work with.

She likes us here at Mann Made Time, too. She talks about me all the time, which I love. Here’s an official testimonial she’s written for my website:

“Living in a rural community on an island off of the east coast of Canada requires an entrepreneurial person to leverage as much as possible in order to have a successful business. Throw in the mix being a single mom and living in a 150 year old house – I need all the help I can get. Thanks to my virtual assistant, Jaime Lee Mann from www.mannmadetime.com I have been able to get my new marketing business off the ground by utilizing her huge arsenal of expertise. She also tells me to breathe sometimes and takes the edge off of being a solo-preneur by being there whenever I need her. I love my VA. Jaime has done everything from brainstorming sessions, to editing letters, to going to client’s offices to set up systems, mailing letters, did I mention all of the advice she gives? I have out-sourced projects to many professionals over the years and using a virtual assistant has been one of the best returns on investment that I have ever made.”

We have truly partnered together and are improving each others businesses. It’s a match made in Heaven, really.

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I am a huge fan of Google. They have so many great, free tools that are extremely useful to me. I use their Gmail for several different clients as well as myself. I love their Google ‘Docs’ which allows me to collaborate on documents for free. I have Google Alerts set up for my clients and myself along with some other keywords I’m interested in. Do you have Google Alerts set up?

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, when you log in to your Google account (with your Gmail address) click on the ‘My Account’ link at the top of the screen. You’ll see the little icon of a bell on the list of available tools - that’s Google Alerts. You type in keywords that you want to be notified of coming on the internet. Example. If you’re a real estate agent, you could type in the street name of one of your listings and you’ll receive an email notification the next time that street name appears online.

You can set up Google Alerts for anything. I have alerts set up for my name, my business name, my clients’ names, virtual assistance, etc.

I read my blog feeds in Google Reader, and I check my web stats with Google Analytics…and the list goes on.

But Google just outdid themselves….er…outdid itself? I don’t know…but in any case…they have just done something wonderful.

I am now able to sync my Microsoft Outlook calendar with my Google Calendar. I kid you not. I can do two way syncs between Outlook’s calendar and Google’s. That is the most exciting thing to happen to me this week.

It was super easy to set up, all you do is click the bold red link above your Google Calendar that says ‘New! Outlook sync” or something obvious like that. After that, I had to download something very, very small, then type in my Gmail account info. I chose two way sync instead of one way, then clicked on the neat little calendar icon in my little Systray thingy. When I click that, my calendars magically sync.

While this might not seem like a big deal to some people, consider the scenario in which you are managing someone’s calendar in Google, without an easy sync feature. Or someone is managing your calendar and counting on you to keep them in sync.

In my case, I have someone checking my email for me. She will sometimes take things from my email (Gmail) and enter them in my Google calendar for me. Outlook really distracts me, so I try to keep it closed during the day. My VA forwards my urgent and important messages to a secret Gmail account so I don’t have to open Outlook and end up losing my focus! Now, I won’t have to open up my Outlook account at all during the day if I don’t want to.

Thanks, Google. Great feature!

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My business became fairly successful, fairly quickly. I absolutely love what I do. I love, love, love supporting busy professionals, and that has led to my becoming a busy professional!

Everyone knows we are only given 24 hours per day - all of us. No matter how wealthy we are, we can’t really buy more time. However, the smartest among us know that we can free up more time by outsourcing some of our tasks.

My client work must come before anything else I do, and I don’t believe that to be unique to my business. As a result of my priorities, I’ve been falling behind on the administration of Mann Made Time. My email was getting way out of control, and managing all aspects of my projects had become overwhelming, and takes a ton of (unbillable) time.

I decided that it was time to do something about this! I’ve been working with Victoria Santiago for almost 8 months now, contracting her services for several different things.

I’ve mentioned before on my blog that I’ve had her start managing my email. It’s a very tough habit to break, staying out of my Outlook, but it’s starting to run very smoothly. As action items come up in my email, Victoria adds them to my ‘Toodledo‘ list, and ensures everything is entered in my collaboration site. She also set up a top secret Gmail account where she forwards my urgent messages (So I don’t get distracted in Outlook). It’s working out great. We’re almost a perfectly well oiled machine.

The bottom line is, for the number of hours I’ve retained her for, it’s an absolute priceless investment. I’ve got more focus for my important client projects, I have a system in place for delegating work to my other associates, and I’ve freed up time.

If you’re a busy professional and feel like you can’t breathe with the amount of stuff you have on your plate, get in touch with me. My team can help you. I know how tough it is to let go of that control, I’ve done it myself.

And I am not looking back.

And I’m not looking in Outlook, Victoria. Promise

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I was pondering something last night while I was watching American Idol (and wondering why in the world that first guy sang a WHAM song) that I thought would make great blog material.

I had this dilemma when I was starting my business. I was brand new and had lots of administrative experience, but I was trying so hard to find that first client, and I felt like all of the more experienced VAs were getting all the work. I had a case of the self-doubts and wondered why anyone would want to work with me when I had no actual ‘virtual’ experience.

First of all, what didn’t strike me right away was that nobody needs to know how many clients you have. I didn’t write my website content stating “Newbie VA offers her services”. I used testimonials from past employers, tried to demonstrate my areas of experience, and whipped up a ‘corporate resume’ so in the event of a potential employer questioning my work history, I would be prepared. Interestingly enough, to this day nobody has asked to see a resume. I pushed those doubts aside, and worked with what I did have that the more experienced VAs might not. Time. I marketed the bejeezus out of my business. And it worked.

Second of all, it could be an interesting feature to play off of, if you’re bold. Why not advertise that you’re brand new in business. Offer a deal - your first client will receive 10% off your services for their first year - or something. A new business owner is full of energy. Full of motivation and momentum. A new business owner is a force to be reckoned with.

Sometimes, after being in business for a while, you get lots of referral business, you let your marketing efforts get stale, you feel confident that you’re going to continue to do alright. You’re busy, your systems might be getting a little old, you might have lost a bit of that entrepreneurial spark you had when you were just getting out of the gate.

Of course, with experience comes knowledge, expertise and trust.

I was thinking about this, in particular, when it comes to real estate agents. There is always someone new popping up. They come, they go. Some stay for a long time.

A seasoned ‘top producer’ has a lot going for her. A great database full of contacts, name recognition in her market area. Lots of word of mouth referrals, etc.

Does that mean there’s no hope for a new agent starting out in that area? Not at all.

A new agent is coming on to the scene full of new ideas, a drive to become successful and catch up with the big guys.

I was perusing Active Rain and found a new agent in Charlottetown that has a great blog over there. Good for her. She was the only agent I saw in this area that didn’t just plug in an RSS feed for ‘PEI’ . I feel that’s cheating. It’s not really blogging. This agent actually wrote an interesting and useful post. She took the time to share something with her readers, and in turn, her blog has much more to offer than local news, weather reports, and other mundane information that doesn’t belong on Active Rain.

I am going to keep my eye on this person. I’ve seen her name in a lot of places, and I think she is going to be one of the ‘top producers’ in a couple of years time.

So what do you think?

When you’re in need of a service, would you rather work with someone that’s brand new - full of energy and drive?

Or would you tend to work with a seasoned pro. Someone who’s name has been around for awhile?

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